The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day
by Victoria Hughes
Summary: Bumblebee went into recharge as a Camaro. He woke up as a woman. Thank Primus it only lasted one day.


_I make absolutely every possible apology for this story. All you need to know is that this takes place sometime during the four years that Bumblebee was traveling around North America looking for the Allspark, before he met Sam._

_Enjoy …?_

**The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day**

_Bumblebee went into recharge as a Camaro. He woke up as a woman. Thank Primus it only lasted one day._

&

**Chapter 1: Leslie Burton (4-6 AM)**

It all started with a man.

His name was Leslie Burton. At the age of 54, he'd already heard every possible insult his feminine name could garner. He ran a Silver Diner off of Interstate 90 in South Dakota, which was constantly under threat of being shut down until every summer a surge in cross-country travelers brought in enough business to keep them afloat for another year. He only employed nine aging servers and four constantly rotating cooks, and they all griped weekly about having to do inventory to the point that Leslie had finally taken it on himself to do the job.

It was four in the morning when he parked his car in its usual spot and crossed the parking lot, whistling under his breath in the cool spring air. The Badlands that made up much of the Dakotas weren't much to live on but were beautiful to look at – he firmly believed the best thing about his restaurant was the view from the windows facing away from the road. At the moment the horizon was a silhouette and the stars were blotted out by the streetlights looming a hundred feet over his head, but Leslie was an early riser by nature. He promised himself a cup of coffee to warm his chilled hands when he got inside.

He tripped over a soft lump of _something _in the middle of the parking lot and staggered several steps forward. "Hell!" he swore under his breath, twisting to see what had gotten caught under his feet. "What the devil …"

In the shadows cast by the street lamps, he saw what looked like a small pile of clothes at first. When it moved, he jumped, realizing it was a human. "My god!" He stared for several seconds too long.

The person, whoever it was, was sitting up. He realized belatedly it was a young woman, identifying her sex by her long wavy hair, wearing some kind of overlarge jacket. She pushed herself up on one hand and dazedly held the other to her head before suddenly jerking said hand forward, staring at it as if it were a foreign thing. Immediately she began to pat her body down, even running her fingers through her hair as though surprised by every aspect of her features.

Slightly off-put by the weird behavior, Leslie cautiously took a step forward. The woman looked up, and as Leslie's eyes adjusted to the light he could see that she was frightened and wary, glaring at him, but her eyebrows rose in confusion. "Hey," he started. "Sorry I tripped over ya. Shouldn't take naps in parking lots, you know: anyone could find ya."

The girl stared at him, saying nothing. Leslie bit his lip and sighed aloud. She looked like a runaway: he couldn't make out much, the poor light hard on his aging eyes, but her clothes looked dirty and there wasn't a car but his own in sight. Maybe she'd been hitching across the country and this was as far as her money would get her. There was a good chance worse had happened to her but he didn't want to think about that. He crouched by her and the girl startled back slightly. "Hey! Hey, I'm not gonna hurt ya." Resisting the impulse to reach out and touch her shoulder in reassurance, Leslie chewed the inside of his lip. "Did someone hurt ya? You okay?"

The woman's eyebrows twitched downwards, but she didn't look away from Leslie for a long moment, her gaze flicking over his button-down shirt and slacks. Eventually she looked down at herself, her chin dropping to her chest, and began anew the touching self-examination she had done frantically moments before.

Leslie had to look away when she grasped her own breasts as if testing their weight, but he glanced back in time to see her staring at her hands with wide eyes, slowly moving her pinky fingers back and forth. She seemed to have forgotten Leslie was there at all. "Oy," he said to call her attention back. _She's real confused. Maybe she got a concussion or something?_

The woman lifted her head again, her long hair falling all over her face. She shook her head slowly. It took Leslie a moment to realize she was telling him that she wasn't hurt. "Oh. Okay, well, that's good." What did he do now? Vagabonds wandered in and out but he'd never, in the fifteen years he'd run this restaurant, found anyone abandoned in the parking lot. All Leslie knew was that crouching like this was killing his knees and the sun wasn't going to rise soon enough for his eyes to deal with the light. "Okay." He groaned as he got back to his feet; the girl tracked his every movement with her eyes. "Come on. You can't stay out here by yourself like this."

The woman didn't seem to comprehend what he was saying. She frowned and glanced around the deserted parking lot as if looking for some threat she didn't see.

Leslie swore under his breath and promptly asked God's forgiveness for the blasphemy. "Come on, I'm serious. Come inside. Don't make an old man stand out here in the cold."

Maybe she was just wary of being alone in a building with a man she didn't know, but she wasn't much safer out here. Nonetheless, after hesitating for only a few more seconds, the woman planted her palms on the asphalt and started to get to her feet, first rising to her knees then putting one foot on the ground, then the other, lifting her butt up into the air in a ridiculous manner. Leslie watched this whole procedure incredulously, but when the woman lifted her hands off the ground and slowly got to her feet as if balance was an entirely new concept, she abruptly windmilled her arms and staggered several steps forward. "Woah!" Leslie narrowly avoided a collision by sidestepping her, and he ended up grabbing her by the jacket to stop her forward momentum. She dropped to one knee, breathing quickly. "What the devil is wrong with you?" Leslie muttered.

The woman gave him a pleading look, but still didn't speak. Leslie sighed, bending over to take her elbow and help her back to a standing position. Her jacket was cool to the touch; the manager had clearly underestimated the chill of the night. It was still mid-March and he had no way of knowing how long she'd been out in the cold. "Honestly, already think you're more trouble than you're worth! Let's get you inside and warmed up, and then you can tell me who to call for you."

The girl sighed deeply, leaning into Leslie's hold as if it was the only thing holding her up. She still didn't say a single word.

&

It was hard to say what shocked Bumblebee most: the fact that he – she? – was now a human female, or the fact that she didn't know how she'd gotten this way.

"All right, there you go," the man who had found her was saying, helping Bumblebee to navigate the steps leading up to the front door of the human eating establishment. "Can you stand by yourself yet?" Bumblebee nodded, planting her feet shoulder-width apart to help herself maintain her balance. The man grunted and turned away, fiddling with a set of keys on a metal ring.

Bumblebee remembered the building. She was extremely grateful to it for its existence at the moment, since it was the only way she was able to reassure herself she was in the same place she had gone into recharge. The night before she had driven into the parking lot and gone into recharge, routine as could be. When she left recharge in the morning it was to the sensation of being kicked in the back, to complete loss of gyroscopics and positional subroutines, and a steady thud in her audio receptors. Panicking, she had come to full alertness faster than protocols allowed and … sat up?

The Autobot already wished she could erase the whole discovery from her memory banks. Nothing was right, and she was so disoriented she felt lucky that she could move at all.

Bumblebee closed her optics – eyes – and quickly opened them again when she discovered her new gyroscopics system (much poorer than her mechanical ones) relied heavily on sighting the horizon to help her maintain her balance. She braced herself and bent her knees slightly to help herself stand straight up, but the man opened the door at that moment. "Need help still?"

Bumblebee tried taking a step. The sensation of muscles working in her calf and foot to help balance her bipedal form was not entirely unlike pistons, but when she looked down she felt as if she was going to fall over and when she looked up she felt as if her feet weren't even there. Everything about her body was so light! She couldn't get over it. But the step landed successfully and she didn't fall, so she slowly and experimentally took another step, and another, holding her arms out to either side of her new, slender body (which seemed to help).

The man patiently waited for her to make progress into the building. He gripped her elbow as he had when helping Bumblebee walk across the parking lot and guided her to the round, backless stools that lined the raised flat surface that ran along one wall of the whole building. Bumblebee carefully slid her rear end onto the presented seat, surprised by the soft, slightly sticky sensation of the squeaky material. Every touch surprised her, from the sensation of her hair in her fingers right down to how her clothing pinched at the juncture of her legs. "All right. You just stay here and I'll go grab you a coat. Feel like telling me your name or anything?"

Ah, yes, her voice. Bumblebee hadn't tested that yet, but she didn't hold out much hope.

So far it seemed that the transformation from autonomous robotic organism to sentient biological creature had been a direct conversion with holo-form influence. First of all, she was a female like her holo-form. Her clothes, Bumblebee had quickly discovered, were a yellow jacket with black stripes (like her armor and alt-mode), but she also wore a tight white sleeveless top and blue denim pants with footwear (like her holo-form). Her hair was blond and her eyes were blue, also like her holo-form. But her clothes were dirty like her armor. The same 'subroutines' (if they could still be called that!) still controlled the same parts of her body and basic functions, but other subroutines and plenty of hardware seemed to have disappeared into the abyss of her suddenly organic brain. On the other hand, new hardware and routines seemed to have replaced those. For instance, her sense of touch was much more acute. Nonetheless, she doubted her voice had been restored just because she was suddenly human: more likely she had simply lost her internal radio (which was true).

"B--!" Before she could manage to say her name the front of her neck burst into a level of pain that should have caused static on her sensors but only made the thudding sound coloring everything become more frequent. Sucking air through her intakes – her nose and mouth – her chest began to spasm painfully, expelling the air again in forceful bursts that made horrible involuntary sounds. Bumblebee's body took over, forcing her to double over as the spasms continued for at least ten more seconds.

Bumblebee didn't even know that for sure. What time was it? How many breems had passed since she went into recharge and underwent this strange transformation?

When the spasms stopped, Bumblebee dragged a long, deep breath and slowly sat up. Her face seemed to have a raised temperature and her throat, chest, and lower torso hurt, and her face was wet with some kind of fluid leak from her new eyes. She reached up to touch her cheek and put her finger under her nose, attempting to ascertain its nature by smell, but even as an Autobot her olfactory sensors weren't very strong. She smelled nothing.

_Great. Just great. I have this body for perhaps fifteen minutes and I am already breaking it! _The man who, up until this time, had shown compassion was staring at her with wide eyes. Bumblebee lowered her finger and held her arms close to her sides, shrugging her shoulders slightly. As expected, her voice still didn't work, but she didn't know how to communicate that.

"Are you sick?" the man asked with sudden concern.

Bumblebee shook her head, although she didn't know. If she had been in her usual shape she would have booted a subroutine to check for any viruses (usually the cause of human 'sickness', like viruses in Cybertronians), but that option wasn't available to her. The sudden realization that she _could _be sick made the thudding sound pick up its pace yet again.

In aggravation Bumblebee tried to locate by the newly sensitive touch pathways where the sound was coming from (since her audio receptors – ears – weren't helping much). She finally located the strongest sensation of thudding from under her left mammary organ (breast) and she held her hand there, feeling it make the material under her fingers shift. _It's where my spark should be._ Perhaps it was the organ responsible for powering the circulatory systems that nearly every complex biological creature had. She had not expected it to have such power as to actually move the body she now possessed.

The human male made a strange sound that drew Bumblebee's attention once again, and the man slowly lowered his hand from his mouth. "Okay, well, my name's Leslie Burton. You can just call me Les, okay? I'm going to go get you that coat now." He turned away, seeming to sense that Bumblebee could not (or perhaps thought she simply _would_ not) reply.

Bumblebee nodded at the man's back, recalling dimly that a coat was a clothing object meant to keep the wearer warm. Now that the man mentioned it, her temperature regulation systems _did _seem to be malfunctioning, giving her the sensation of being cold. The ambient temperature, even outside, couldn't have been much lower than 45 degrees Fahrenheit, though – humans were so susceptible to even slight temperature changes!

_I hate this, _she thought, clutching her arms around herself for no particular reason except that her body seemed to demand it. It made her feel slightly warmer. _Why did this happen? _She didn't know, and with no way to access her diagnostic routines she couldn't find out.

_What if I end up stuck this way?_

That didn't bear thinking about, so she put the thought from her mind, staring at her denim-clad knees with an unblinking stare.

&

The girl was downright weird.

For one thing, it seemed she couldn't (or wouldn't) talk. Her sudden coughing spasm when she seemed to be about to say something suggested … hell, Leslie didn't know _what _it suggested. He wasn't a doctor.

He did know that at this rate, his inventory wasn't going to get done before noon.

Maybe she was deaf …? No, she'd responded to sounds he'd made to get her attention. So she was mute. Could a person be mute? She looked American but maybe she had lived in some backwards country and her tongue had been cut out or something!

_Now I'm just overthinking it, _he told himself, shaking his head as he found a wool coat in the lost and found box in the office. (Nothing that was lost was ever found, unless it was a cell phone or another piece of expensive technology. People didn't bother to turn around on Interstate 90 for old coats.) He shook it out and slung it over his arm, stopping to consider what else the girl might need.

She didn't seem to be particularly unwell. Her clothes were dirty but good for the road, and she didn't have any bruises he could see. She had big breasts (and no bra – it was impossible to not notice) and long blonde hair and blue eyes … actually, if she didn't act so entirely _strange _she would have reminded him of a movie superstar. _Basically, _he told himself, _I don't need to call 911._ Unless she was a psycho. He didn't think so but she was weird enough.

The biggest mystery was how she had ended up out here in the middle of nowhere without a car. Maybe she'd been robbed? Carjacked? Somehow he had to get a name and number off of her, call her family or something.

And get her something to eat. _That _would be easy enough.

He left the office and meandered through the small kitchen to the front to find the young woman looking around the diner with wide, unblinking eyes, although she remained in the seat he had put her in. She studied the clock on the wall for a long time then flicked her gaze over the walls. She lingered over the jukebox until Leslie cleared his throat again.

Immediately the girl looked up again, giving him an inquiring look with slightly drawn brows and a tilted head. Leslie held the acquired coat over the counter. "Here ya go. It should help ya warm up."

The woman reached out to take the proffered coat. She held it out in front of her by the shoulders for a few seconds too long, frowning, before throwing it over her shoulders and struggling to get her arms though the sleeves. Leslie almost reached out to help her, but she seemed to figure it out on her own after a bit.

_Maybe she's just retarded. _It wasn't politically correct, calling retarded people retarded – they were _learning disabled _or _mentally challenged _now – but Leslie liked to call an apple an apple, and right now he was pretty sure this pretty blonde girl was just … retarded.

"Ya hungry?" he asked at length.

The woman frowned again and stared at him with that unnerving unblinking gaze. He gestured, waving one hand in a circle before imitating the act of scooping food into his mouth. "You know, eat somethin'. Hungry. Ya wanna eat?"

She didn't seem to understand, still just staring at him. Just when Leslie was about to throw up his hands in surrender, she lifted her chin and began to nod. She still seemed confused, but Leslie felt stupidly heartened by the affirmative answer.

"Okay. Ya got any preferences?"

The woman stared at him again. She shrugged after a few seconds.

Leslie scrubbed a hand back through his thinning hair. "Then you're gettin' what I'm gettin'," he told her. Which were coffee and a bagel. If he wasn't already so far behind on his inventory he would have grilled her a 'real' heart-attack breakfast with eggs and bacon. (Though his doc told him he had to cut back on those. He had and was rewarded with lower blood pressure and longing taste buds.) He turned his back to start the coffee, shaking his head.

&

_Food. _One of the three basic necessities for humans. Bumblebee wasn't sure if she was in need of sustenance, but it couldn't hurt to be prudent and eat something.

Peripherally she was terrified of the experience. It would be the first time the scout had ever ingested something with taste and through an orifice she wasn't used to having. Her mouth felt … kind of disgusting. Wet. Her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth when her teeth were set together and gave a sense of slightly rough texture but she wasn't sure if there was any taste there, and even if there was she didn't have the words to describe it. Humans described tastes, but she had no points of reference.

But it seemed at least that her throat made involuntary movements to help keep the liquid in her mouth from overflowing from her lips. Perhaps it was part of the same involuntary subroutines that kept her inhaling and exhaling and her not-spark thudding in her chest (a heart, she remembered, then grew irritated with not immediately remembering it). Would they work when she 'ate'?

Then the smell of the 'coffee' the man was brewing hit her olfactory parts (nose). She gasped slightly at how _tangible _the smell seemed – the smell of coffee beans, ground and wet and heated. It reminded her vaguely of … nothing, really.

She had never seen the inside of a human building before except in pictures, either. There were many seats with countertops overlapping them. Small bottles and glass and ceramic containers held various substances – one of them, a red bottle proclaiming itself KETCHUP, wasn't far from her seat. While the man – designation Leslie, or Les – had been gone, she had opened the bottle and sniffed it, but the salt and tomato smell meant nothing to her. The machine in the corner that was lined with bright neon pink and green fluorescent lights particularly grabbed her attention. She wondered what its function was. She had also studied the timekeeping device on the wall (roundfaced and abstract) long enough to determine it was 4:28 AM. The clock did not get any more precise than that.

She startled from her contemplation when Leslie set a mug of the coffee in front of her. "I take it diesel strength, so here's some cream for that. Sugar's right there." He pointed to a little ceramic container next to the KETCHUP that held small paper packets of … apparently sugar. They were color-coded, like many things in the human world. Bumblebee stared blankly at them before being easily distracted by the hot mug of rich-smelling nearly black liquid at her elbow.

Diesel strength? Surely this stuff bore no chemical similarity to petrol – it would kill a human! She reached out to grab the mug and found it was quite hot to the touch – unsurprising, given the amount of steam rising from the contents. She could only imagine something so hot to her fingers to be unpleasant to her new mouth. Bumblebee gingerly pulled it directly in front of herself and blew down into the cup gently, cooling the contents much as her normally metal body cooled her circuits, by blowing external air over them.

The 'cream' came in a paper carton. The carton said 'half-and-half', and Bumblebee turned it around to get more information. It was half cream and half milk. Information about its nutritional value was laid in a spreadsheet format on one side, both by actual amount and 'daily value'. She wondered who determined the daily value as printed, but she carefully tipped some of the contents into the coffee if only to help cool it. It filled the cup to nearly overflowing and she watched the cream dilute into the coffee, turning it a light brown and more opaque. The sugar, also an apparent prerequisite for diluting the coffee from 'diesel-strength', was a whole other mystery. She set that aside for now since adding any other contents to the mug would surely displace enough fluid to overflow the glass.

_Wheeljack would have loved this, _she thought, feeling as if she was performing some kind of experiment. Bumblebee picked up the cup, using the curved extended handle to spare her fingers, pressed the edge of the mug against her lower lip, and carefully tipped the contents towards her mouth.

Her mouth and lips did all the movement on their own, lips pursing and her throat cutting off air intake in preparation for ingestion. Consciously all Bumblebee registered was _hot! _And _bitter!_ (A word she didn't truly understand, but her human mind quickly applied it to the taste without her consent.)

She swallowed quickly to get the liquid out of her mouth and had to put down the cup quickly to once again burst into a spasm of uncontrolled air expulsion. She put her hand to her mouth as she had seen humans do in the past on the street when they burst into similar spasms. This one passed much more quickly as Bumblebee forced her body to take in air at a more sedate pace, purposely breathing deeply.

To her surprise, Leslie started _laughing_.

Bumblebee stared at him. He was holding two plates with some kind of round bread on them in one hand; the other hand still held his mug of coffee. "Never had coffee before?" he asked, still chuckling. The smile made the loose skin around his eyes crinkle.

Bumblebee shook her head quickly, feeling her cheeks grow warm when she became embarrassed by his laughter. Did every human drink this stuff? Was 'bitter' a desirable flavor? Did coffee have some kind of value that Bumblebee couldn't determine from one sip?

"Yer one strange kid," he said when he had finished laughing, putting down a plate of round bread in front of Bumblebee. It smelled vaguely of salt and heat wafted from it. "Where ya from?"

_The planet Cybertron, a place so far away its star is invisible to all but the most powerful of your satellites. _But even if her voice was working she would have had a hard time explaining that. Not sure at all how to reply, Bumblebee shrugged.

The smile on Leslie's face disappeared, and his brows drew down. "You dunno? You mean ya _forgot?_ If ya can talk ya gotta talk now, girl, 'cause I can't play twenty questions around the world."

Bumblebee had _no idea _what that last phrase meant but Leslie seemed upset – whether he was worried or angry she couldn't figure out. _If he knows I can't speak perhaps he will be less angry? _Bumblebee gestured frantically, clutching her throat and shaking her head. Her skin was soft under her own fingers.

Indeed Leslie relaxed, seeming to physically fall back even though he didn't do anything other than slump his shoulders. "So yer really mute. Never --- eh." He shrugged, aborting a sentence. "Look, eat your bagel." So that was what the round bread was. "I'll make you something else to drink. Ya like milkshakes?"

Bumblebee shrugged more quickly this time. As long as they weren't _bitter._

"I'll take that as a yes." The man put down his own plate on the countertop and picked up one half of the 'bagel', taking a bite of it. He talked with his mouth full of food, which made him harder to understand. "But when yer done, I'm gonna need some information. I'll get ya some paper so you can write a number I can call or something. You _can _write, right?"

Bumblebee touched the bagel and found it pleasantly warm; she picked up one half and watched the man chew while she sorted out the 'right right' homonym problem. She nodded in answer once she realized what was being asked, and took a cautious bite of the bagel herself.

Compared to the coffee, the bagel was very bland. There was a soft creamy flavor and something her new brain decided was 'salty', but as she chewed and her mouth gradually mixed in more and more saliva, the flavors grew duller. It was hard to swallow until she stopped trying to do it consciously; her body did it on its own. Humans, she decided, relied on a massive number of involuntary subroutines to get them through their daily life – possibly more than Cybertronians, except perhaps the most complex models.

Leslie nodded when she nodded and smiled again, briefly. "Thank heaven." He took two more bites of his bagel, then turned to a couple of machines. Bumblebee watched with great interest.

&

Everyone liked milkshakes, and every woman liked chocolate. Leslie was banking on this. He started to scoop chocolate ice cream into a blender and added a generous portion of milk and chocolate syrup. The machine was loud and needed replacement, but it got the job done.

Leslie chuckled again when he remembered the face the girl had made upon drinking the coffee, but he sobered quickly. _She says she can write – I hope she's not lying. _Or that she knew what 'writing' meant. _Heaven only knows what's wrong with this woman. _If she only wrote nonsense, he was taking her to the hospital as soon as the opening waitress arrived and washing his hands of the whole thing. They'd be able to get some actual information off this woman.

He poured the milkshake into a tall cup and stuffed a spoon and straw into the thick mixture before turning around. He found the girl's plate empty; she was licking her thumb while holding up a sugar packet, frowning at the nutritional information on the back. "Yer milkshake's ready. Hope you like chocolate," Leslie said to draw her attention.

The girl looked up with wide eyes before carefully inserting the sugar packet back into its place. Leslie slid the milkshake in front of her and the woman leaned over the cup, inhaling deeply through her nose with her eyes closed. She smiled fleetingly.

Leslie tried not to stare as he backed away, but it was hard not to; the girl fiddled with the straw and picked up the dripping spoon in a wary manner, examining it as if not sure of its purpose. Finally she took a sip through the straw.

Her eyes widened, and she jerked her head back, staring at the cup for a long moment. She licked her lips. Then she looked up at Leslie and smiled.

_Thank you, _she mouthed, and took another long pull on her straw.

Leslie couldn't help smiling briefly – she didn't seem bothered by his staring, although Leslie was embarrassed about being caught doing so. Her reaction to the milkshake reminded him of his niece Sarah when she'd had her first milkshake … it was hard to believe that had been more than fifteen years ago, now. "Yer welcome," he said, shrugging slightly. "Now I gotta go get some work done, but I'll be back in a few minutes, so you just sit tight and enjoy."

It was 5:05 AM already. Leslie shook his head; there was no way his inventory was going to get done on time now.

&

Bumblebee smiled again and nodded at Leslie as he again left the front room of the diner, distracted by the pleasant scent of the chocolate milkshake sitting in front of her. The taste still lingered on her tongue – soft, smooth, sweet, and tainted with a flavor for which she had no words, she was certain nothing else would ever taste so wonderful. She sucked on the straw again, amazed by how even though the sensation was like air intake, her body still closed off access to her breathing apparatus so the viscous liquid passed through to her energon converter – no, _stomach, _digestive tract – instead. It completely made up for the bitter taste of the coffee.

But distracted as she was, she still noted the time – 5:05 AM. She had been human for at least an hour now, and possibly considerably longer. She did not know how long this biological form would last, or if it would last forever, and it was time to start considering what her next move was. If only she knew how this had happened in the first place--! But without that information, she was forced to ignore the cause and consider only the implications.

If this lasted forever, she would have to complete her mission – locating the Allspark – as a human. Somewhere in her human mind she had all the information she knew as an Autobot, so it wouldn't be impossible – just very, very difficult. Even communicating her progress with her fellow Autobots would be all but impossible. She would need food and clothing, and so she would need human money to obtain those things.

This was going to take longer than she thought. She had no time to waste.

&

Leslie finished counting the produce before he returned to the front of the diner. "All right. Sorry that took so long. Now, I'll need ya to—"

He looked up realize he was talking to an empty room.

The milkshake cup was empty. The coffee cup was still full but sat cold on the counter. Leslie frowned. "Girl …" he grumbled, wiping his hands on a rag as he approached the now-empty seat.

A server pad and a pencil rested squarely in front of the seat the girl had sat in. Leslie picked it up; the writing on the pad was neat and almost mechanical in its print.

_Mr. Leslie Burton,_

_I thank you for your hospitality. I cannot stress enough how helpful and kind you have been. My business, however, cannot wait. I apologize for taking the coat but I find I am very cold in this weather._

_I did not know what to do with the food and drink containers so I left them alone. Take care._

_--Bumblebee_

"… Bumblebee?" Leslie muttered to himself, incredulous. The words were precise – odd, but precise – and the name made absolutely no sense. He jogged to the door and slammed it open, looking out over his empty parking lot, but there was no sign of the strange young woman who had been sleeping on the asphalt. "Hey, girl, come back! I wanna help ya!" He shouted. But the woman did not reappear, and there was no place to hide.

"Maybe she's an alien," Leslie grumbled, and started to clean up after her, not knowing what else he could do. It made about as much sense as anything else.

_To be continued_

_There's lots of stories out there that play with the idea of holoforms and the like, but despite Bumblebee's holoform being female in the comics I've never seen anyone (except, I think, Conna Stevenson?) play with the 'Bumblebee as a chick' concept. And now I'm running with it as fast as I can go. Seriously, my deepest apologies._

_Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone who reviews this story!_


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